


Naruto in New York City

by asadcandle, SunMoonAndSpoon



Category: Naruto, Naruto Shippuden
Genre: AU, Gen, Naruto in NYC, New York City, nycnaruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 20,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asadcandle/pseuds/asadcandle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunMoonAndSpoon/pseuds/SunMoonAndSpoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Naruto characters work, attend high school, and otherwise exist in New York City. Recently: Team Ten goes to Providence to look at colleges.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. DeKalb Avenue and Brooklyn Tech High School - Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro

**Author's Note:**

> This AU is a joint effort between Baxaronn and SunMoonAndSpoon, two native New Yorkers who enjoy placing fictional characters in settings that are familiar to us. Characters will go to well-known places like Times Square, but they will also be found in obscure places like Stapleton, Staten Island. We hope that you'll enjoy what you read, and that you'll let us know what you think.

The R train took twenty minutes to drag itself one stop. One stop. Temari and Kankuro could have walked from Atlantic Avenue to Brooklyn Tech in less time than that, but out of laziness they decided to transfer to the R after taking the 5 from Brooklyn College. Kankuro wanted to buy churros from the shriveled old lady under the staircase, and they were both carrying laptops—Temari's was a stupidly heavy 17-inch one, so her shoulders were killing her. The train is lousy with bodies. One young man sits with his legs spread aggressively. What sounds like Jay-Z trails from his headphones, and it's so loud that Temari can't hear her brother speak. A two-year-old girl wearing a princess dress pulls one of her pony-tails, and an old man drools on Kankuro's shoulders. Everyone is wearing puffy coats, and everyone smells like feet. Temari reads the Subway Poetry on the wall across from her, then reads the ads for orange juice and plastic surgery.

Finally, the train wheezes to a stop. They get off in a flood of people, pushing their way to the exit. A girl with a thick braid and an LIU sweatshirt bumps into Temari and doesn't apologize, but she's gone before Temari can complain. They make their way up the stairs and into the cold winter sunlight. Temari shivers. She didn't wear enough layers. She considers asking Kankuro for his sweatshirt, but she decides against it—she doesn't want him to be cold. It's not too far to Brooklyn Tech. They have to pass LIU first, then a bunch of bodegas and junk shops, but if they walk fast their rushing blood will warm their bodies. Kankuro wants to walk slowly, because he's cold. “Come on you idiot,” snaps Temari, grabbing his hand and dragging him past a passel of Tech kids stuffing pizza in their mouths. “Gaara's waiting for us.” 

Gaara is standing outside of the entrance near facing Fort Greene Park. The school looms behind him, cold and dark like a mountain range. This is not the exit he's obliged to use each day, but he says he finds it soothing to watch the trees while he waits. He isn't talking to anybody when they arrive, just standing with his eyes closed, listening to his iPod and nodding along with the song. A boy with a furry jacket that smells like dog brushes past him, but Gaara says nothing in protest. Temari waves to him, and Kankuro takes his heavy backpack and hefts it onto his own shoulders. “How was school today?” asks Temari.

Gaara blinks. He says, “I couldn't get my combination lock to open after gym class. Mr. Maito had to use some sort of clamp device to break the lock. I need to buy a new lock.”

“Aww, Gaara, I told you to write down your combination before you went to class,” says Kankuro.

“I did. I just couldn't get it to open even though the combination was correct.” Temari shrugs and promises him that they'll pick up a new lock on the way home. She asks him if he managed to make any friends today, and Gaara shoots her a clipped, “no.” She drops the subject. It's a touchy one, one she should have known better than to pursue. 

“Do you guys want to walk home or take the train?” she asks. She isn't keen to get back on the sweaty, crowded R train. Gaara says he wants to walk, and Temari does too, so they head back to DeKalb Avenue. It will take over an hour to get home this way, and Gaara probably has too much homework to make it worth it. Temari has a paper due for her Politics of Fear class next week, and Kankuro has an exam in Intro to Psychology on Friday. Still, Temari can't bring herself to sacrifice the pleasure of walking with her siblings in the cold afternoon sunshine. She smiles at Gaara, and he does not smile back, but he looks at her without looking away.


	2. Stapleton, Staten Island - Suigetsu

In the dark of the early morning, Suigetsu slides quietly into his kitchen and fumbles around the counter for the bag of bread. He leaves the light off; he doesn’t want to wake his mom up three hours early, mostly because yesterday he accidentally woke her up at 4 in the morning and she yelled at him about it for thirty minutes straight. Having the lights on would make it a lot easier to use the toaster, but it’s not worth being late again because his mom can’t handle only having five hours of sleep, so he forgoes being able to see and, upon finding the bag, pulls off the plastic tab no one has lost yet and removes two slices of gross, fluffy white bread. He tries feeling around for the toaster, but gives up within a minute and shoves both uncooked pieces of bread into his mouth instead. Food has to happen right now because he’s going to be in transit for three eternities and he doesn’t want to buy food at the ferry terminal. The clock says he only has three minutes left, anyway, so he goes back to his room and puts on the clothes he left crumpled on top of his dresser when he took them off yesterday, leaving the ones he slept in on the floor where his back pack was until he picked it up.

He’s slipping his sneakers on while looking around in his pocket for his keys when he remembers that he has a math test today and needs to get his calculator, which isn’t usually in his bag because it’s freaking huge. He drops his bag on the floor in front of the door and returns to his room, expecting it to be on his desk with all of his other miscellaneous homework tools are, but, mysteriously, it is not there. It’s nowhere else in his room, either, nor is it anywhere in the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, under anything, over anything, anywhere. The only place he hasn’t looked is his mom’s bedroom, and he still doesn’t want to wake her up, or think there’s any chance he left his calculator in her room, but he yanks her door open anyway and says “Moooooooooooom” and asks her if she’s seen his graphing calculator anywhere.

“Huh?” she groans, groggily opening her eyes. “No, I didn’t,” she yawns. “Why, do you need it?”

“I have a test today and I was supposed to leave ten minutes ago,” he explains, walking into her room and looking through the stuff on top of her dresser. “Are you sure? You move my stuff around randomly all the time.”

Yawning again, she peels her blankets off and stands up. She pushes past Suigetsu and heads straight for his room, looks in all of the same places he looked, rubs her eyes and yawns again. “I already looked there,” Suigetsu tells her as he kneels to the floor and reaches around under his bed. “I already looked everywhere! It just stopped existing! Fuck.”

“Maybe it’s in the couch?” his mom suggests, given that he frequently does his homework in front of the TV. He looks there; it’s not there. She suggests somewhere else, and it’s not there either. Half an hour passes and all they find is a scientific calculator that ran out of batteries three years ago. If Suigetsu doesn’t leave now, he’ll miss the entirety of his first class, which he is routinely late for.

“Are you sure you didn’t leave it in the living room?” she asks. Suigetsu throws his backpack over his shoulders and practically runs out the door, yelling “I’m just gonna borrow one!” from the sidewalk as he begins to literally run up the hill and around the corner. The S78 is already at the bus stop at the end of the block, and for a second he thinks the bus driver might wait for him to catch up, but his hope is drained as he watches the doors swing closed even though he’s only a few meters away and there’s no reason why the driver wouldn’t have seen him from that distance. “God damn it!” he shouts. The traffic light changes to green and the bus rolls away.

Determined to be less than an hour late for school, Suigetsu balls his fists and makes a run for it. The next stop is only a few blocks away, and if he’s lucky the bus will be stopped at a light and he’ll get there before it does. He runs down the block and across the street as fast as he can, but alas he is delayed by several seconds as he trips over a protruding tree root. This is just enough time for the bus to land at the next stop, let on one person and again not wait for him even though he’s really close and there’s no way in hell the bus driver didn’t notice him running to catch up like that. He considers trying to make it to the next stop. He abandons the idea because his foot fucking hurts from tripping like that, and the next boat has probably already left anyway, so he might as well wait for the next bus and not exhaust himself for no reason. He only got three hours of sleep last night. The sun is starting to rise. The bus schedule on the pole in the sidewalk says the next bus will arrive in seven minutes. It doesn’t come for twenty.

When he finally gets to the ferry terminal the next boat isn’t going to leave for fifteen minutes. Despite this, the doors are crowded with people waiting impatiently for them to open, people who want to get on first so they can stand in the front of the boat and wait impatiently for it to dock so they can rush to the same train that everyone else is going to end up getting on too because it’s just going to sit in the station waiting for ferry transfers anyway. Suigetsu doesn’t like waiting in those crowds; at least, not from the Staten Island side. He sits on one of the benches in the middle of the room instead, watching the inexplicable fish as they swim around in the aquariums in the middle of the room. He picks out a purple fish and watches it swim in the same circle over and over again, snarling into his hand and wishing major inconveniences upon the bus driver who probably didn’t make him any later to school than he was going to be anyway. Fuck that guy.


	3. Yippie Museum Cafe, Bleecker Street, Manhattan - Sasuke, Obito, and Shisui

Obito’s band has been playing for over an hour. Sasuke has wanted to leave for the past 45 minutes.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it were in another venue. The band, Chambers Street, has played in Central Park, in an alleyway venue on Staten Island, in a Hoboken courtyard, in a Williamsburg cafe, in a Mexican Restaurant in Inwood, in the subway, in multiple clubs, and once, due to a random blowjob that the drummer gave an employee, at CBGB’s before it closed down. None of those places were as unbearably sweaty and crowded basement of Yippie Museum Cafe.

Still, Sasuke and Shisui have promised to suffer through it. This is the debut performance of the band’s second album, What it Means to be from Maine. If Obito can sing half the album with his severely damaged throat, standing under bright lights and getting sweat in the joints of his prosthetic leg, Sasuke can sit on top of the unused bar and hear him sing. It’s cooler up there. For some reason Shisui has chosen to immerse himself in the crowd.

Sweat pours down Sasuke’s back, and he taps the top of Shisui’s head, asking him for a sip of his lukewarm water. The battered bottle is almost empty, so Shisui directs him to fill up his hands in the bathroom sink. The bathroom door is blocked by twenty sweaty teenagers, and after yelling several excuses mes he gets tired and shoves on through. The sink water tastes like sweat, but at least he isn’t thirsty. He will be after ten more seconds sweltering out there.

It’s impossible to actually hear the band. Sasuke has heard Obito sing enough times that he dimly recognizes some of the songs. He knows he’s not playing the song inspired by the murder because he promised them both that he wouldn’t, but some of the notes are the same. It makes his stomach hurt, and he doesn’t want to have a stomachache in this heat. He’ll throw up on Shisui’s head. When he’s finally able to make out some of the words, he can hear that it’s a song called _Math Teacher_ , which is about Kakashi and has nothing to do with Sasuke’s parents. As soon as he recognizes the song, it’s over, and they’re doing what sounds like a cover of _Gangnam Style_. The acoustics in this room are terrible, and Sasuke feels like he’s going to faint. Shisui is dancing for some reason. So are most of the drunk, sweaty idiots in the room. Sasuke keeps his seat on the abandoned bar, and crosses his arms.

After what feels like fifty years, Shisui shakes Sasuke’s knee, and tells him that the show is over. Sasuke knows this, but he’s too overheated to act on that knowledge. Shisui helps him down from the bar, and they meander upstairs. “Do you want a smoothie?” Shisui asks. “They sell smoothies. I think you should have one. You look like you’re going to faint.” Sasuke shakes his head, wanting nothing more than to burst into the cool night and get some air. They walk out together, Shisui promising to buy him a drink later.

Obito, being the singer, has no instruments to drag out, and the drummer never asks him to help with her copious equipment. Sasuke considers helping, but in the end he just stands there until Obito arrives. Sasuke moans about how hot it was, and swears he’ll never set foot in that horrible building again. “Too bad,” says Shisui, lips curling upward. “Obito says the next performance is going to be here, too. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but you probably should.”

“Is it going to be in the dead of summer?” asks Sasuke. Shisui shrugs. After a few minutes of exhausted silence, Obito makes his appearance.

“Heeeeyyyy!” he says, slinging his only arm over Shisui’s broad shoulders. His voice sounds hoarse, overused. “Glad you guys could make it! Did you hear the song about teleporting? I totally wrote that one for you little bro.” Shisui had written a short story about teleportation, and was shopping it out to sci-fi magazines. Obito is convinced that it’s the best story ever written by anyone, and he’s convinced that Shisui is going to be a world-famous author, just like Obito is going to be a world-famous singer. Sasuke is supposed to be amazing at something, but what that is has yet to be defined.

Shisui grins. A pigeon struts over Sasuke’s foot, and he kicks at it, shooing it away. Obito laughs and says that there was a pigeon sitting on his prosthetic leg earlier. “I didn’t notice it for like five minutes,” he says. “I wasn’t looking at my feet. The pigeon took a shit right there. I was late to the show because I was cleaning bird poop off my foot. That sounds like something Kakashi would say, doesn’t it?” Sasuke nods. His math teacher is usually late to class, and he always has some stupid excuse for it. “So what are we doing after this?” asks Obito, a sparkling grin still stuck to his face.

 

“Go to Trader Joe’s and eat free samples?” asks Sasuke. He’s hungry, free food sounds appealing right now, and going to Trader Joe’s means going toward home and ending the night at a reasonable hour. He has to be awake at 6 AM for school in the morning, and he’s already exhausted.

“A miniscule amount of free food it is!” says Obito. After saying goodbye to his band mates, Obito grabs Sasuke’s hand, and leads his younger relatives in the direction of Union Square.


	4. A subway tunnel, the R train - Omoi, Karui

The population of the subway car lets out a collective sigh as the train slows down and stops with a horrible shriek that can be heard through even the loudest of volumes on the most noise-cancelling of headphones. The train conductor forgets to announce that he is sorry for any inconveniences caused by the delay they are experiencing, or ask his passengers to be patient, which is just as well because everyone here already knows the drill and no one wants to listen to the fuzzy, unintelligible intercom fail to clearly translate the conductors words into an actual message. Almost everyone ignores the situation and goes back to whatever homework they were doing or book they were reading or game they were playing on their phone or song they were trying to find on their mp3 player. A few people remark to their neighbors how annoying, typical, stupid it is that there have to be delays every day even though there hasn’t even been any construction on this line recently.

“Ugh, what a pain in the ass!” Karui complains, stretching her arms over her head and leaning into her scoop of the yellow-and-orange bench she shares with Omoi and an old man in a Nets T-shirt. “Of course this would happen on the first day of class. Why did the F have to be down today? The R sucks.”

Omoi backs into his seat to make way for Karui’s legs, of which she is in the habit of using to take up as much room as she possibly can, given that she is not sitting next to anyone whose way she is getting in, or that she is sitting next to Omoi. “Do you think professor Moralez is going to be mad if we’re late?” he wonders. “It’s the first day of class, she won’t appreciate us being late for it. What if she fails us for being disrespectful? Can professors do that?”

Karui rolls her eyes and flicks him on the forehead. “You can’t be failed for being late to one class! Didn’t you read that attendance policy thing? Why do you always ask stupid questions when you already know the answer?”

“She’s probably gonna say something really important during the first ten minutes of class that we have to remember but she’s never going to repeat,” Omoi responds. “What if now is the only time she ever explains what the final project is? Then we won’t be able to do it.” Out of his pocket he pulls a pack of gum, one piece of which he unwraps for himself before offering the pack to Karui. “Maybe she can’t fail us for being late once, but she has the right to withhold that kind of information, doesn’t she?”

Karui accepts a stick of gum and sighs in irritation as she sticks it in her mouth. “Probably not,” she guesses. “And even if she does, why would she? That’d be such a crappy thing to do, like damn, if that’s gonna happen then I’m gonna switch classes as soon as possible.” She rolls her gum behind her teeth with her tongue and stares up at the line of advertisements above the window. “Why does a law firm have a silhouette of a boxing leprechaun as it’s logo?” she wonders.

“I just hope we’re not so late that we don’t even get there at all,” Omoi says, diligently avoiding Karui’s attempt to change the subject. “I don’t have any other classes today, so it’ll be like I left for no reason.” He leans forward now and stares at the floor as intently as he can, forehead wrinkled and eyebrows furrowed and other similar facial contortions that look intense. “We’ll probably get to the room without realizing class is over and walk in on a different class that just started. That would be so confusing! The professor would think we were their students, and assign us the same work as everyone else! I’d already be so confused that I’d end up doing the homework they assigned. Maybe I’d even keep doing it for the rest of the semester! I don’t want to spend $200 on a calculus textbook that I don’t even need! You can’t return loose leaf books, you know.”

Karui opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out but a heavy sigh. It’s barely been five minutes since the train stopped moving. She looks at her nails and inspects the polish. A few of them are chipped. “I almost want us to be that late so you’ll see firsthand how stupid everything you say is,” she eventually grumbles, mostly to herself. Omoi picks up his foot and pushes at her ankle with his heel.

“Can you move your leg? I barely have any fucking room here, and it’s not like you’re tall enough to need the extra space.”

“Don’t get your dirty shoes on my pants, you fuck!”

“You’ve been walking on the bottom of your jeans anyway, cause they’re too long and you won’t cuff them! Why do you care how dirty I make them?”

“How does that mean you can kick me?”

“You know you’re gonna trip on them eventually if you keep walking on them like that.”

“Jesus christ, why won’t you ever shut up?!”

The train doesn’t move for another ten minutes.


	5. 34th Street Subway Station, at the top of the escalator down to the B, D, M, and D trains going to Uptown Manhattan and Queens - Deidara and Sasori

“Get your free AM New York newspapers, right here!” Clutching a rolled up copy of today’s issue, Deidara pinwheels his arms at passersby. “Limited time only! If you go down that escalator without an AM New York, you’ll want to jump into the tracks by the time you get to the platform! Get your AM New York!” A few people, peering nervously at his glowing eyes, sweaty face and wide smile, take a copy, but most hurry on to catch their train.

“AM New York is a pile of shit,” snaps Sasori. Sasori is one of three people who hands out copies of the Metro, and he’s usually scheduled for the same time slot that Deidara is. He points to a stack of newspapers and says, “take a Metro. It’s much better and it’ll get me out of here faster.”

“AM New York is a pure moment! It’s an albatross on fire, showering the city with its beauty! It’s about New York City and _only_ New York City, and what it has to say can only be said right here, right now! Even when it’s gone, it will live on in the hearts of its readers for all eternity!” shrieks Deidara. The words make his throat dry, so he drinks half a can of Arizona iced tea before glaring at his enemy.

“The Metro has publications in all major cities. It’s connected to the rest of the world, and so it won’t be forgotten after tomorrow like AM New York will. Even if readers throw the Metro in the trash, its affiliated publications will be saying the same things. At least, the important parts.” Sasori grunts, and shoves a newspaper into the hands of a young woman pushing a stroller. “You’re a mother,” he says. “You understand wanting something that will last.

“I…guess…?” she stares at him, mouth open, and runs her hands through her dreadlocks. “But they’re basically the same newspaper…”

“They’re completely different!” shriek Sasori and Deidara in unison. Both of them are about to launch into the reasons why, but the young mother quickly disappears into the sea of people trying to force their way onto the escalator.

A bearded man wearing a black t-shirt that says “fuck you you fucking fuck” in white lettering puts a hand up. He says, “I’m pretty sure AM New York has affiliates in other areas too. You should know that if you work for them.”

“Does my passion mean nothing to you!?” screams Deidara, thrusting a copy of AM New York into the man’s hand. “Take it, and you will realize that it is art at its finest!” The man takes a copy, and hops onto the escalator.

“Would you people just take my goddamn newspaper so that I can go home?” snarls Sasori. People start taking their newspapers, but no one knows if their choice is random, or if it’s informed by a preference for permanence, or for a single moment.


	6. Completely and utterly lost in the middle of Queens -  Yamato and Kakashi

“Yamato?”

“Hn.”

“Yamato.”

“Yeah.”

_“Yamato.”_

“Huh?”

“Where are we?”

Yamato looks up from the booklet he’s been reading since it was handed to him four blocks ago. “I,” he says, reading the signs on the corner and finding himself at the intersection between two streets he has never heard of before, “don’t know.”

“Okay, that’s what I thought.”

“Well, do you know where we are?”

“No,” Kakashi says, also unfamiliar with the names of the streets they’ve suddenly found themselves on. ‘Suddenly’ being the key word, as neither of them have been watching where they were walking until this exact moment. “I was following you.”

Having lived their whole lives in Manhattan, neither of them have developed the ability to orient themselves in space without at least one street that is numbered instead of named, so this hyphenated corner gives them no clue about where they are. They walk, paying attention this time, a few blocks in a randomly chosen direction, until they land on 41st avenue.

“We’re somewhere in the middle of Queens,” observes Kakashi, holding his chin thoughtfully. “Bronx doesn’t have forty-one avenues.”

“Why would we be in the Bronx?” Yamato asks. The booklet he was reading is about how people who don’t believe in Jesus Christ’s doctrine of love and forgiveness will burn for all eternity in the fiery pits of hell, and every other paragraph is punctuated with a three panel comic strip about Satan laughing as he spears people on a trident for calmly explaining why they haven’t exactly decided whether they believe in the Christian god yet. Now that he thinks about it, he’s had it for significantly longer than four blocks; he remembers taking it from someone standing across the street from the Apollo theater, which is unmistakeably not in Queens.

“Why would I remember which bridge we went over? There’s one every ten blocks,” Kakashi argues. “So where in Queens are we, anyway? We have to be pretty deep in because I’m pretty sure we’ve been walking for,” he checks his watch, “six hours. We went over…Roosevelt Island, or something, on the way here, so we’re…actually I don’t know what that would mean about where we are.”

“We didn’t go over Roosevelt Island, that’s further downtown.”

“Oh, then which one was it?”

“Uh…I’m not sure, I wasn’t paying attention.”

Kakashi reaches into his pocket and feels around for his phone, with which he could find their current location on a map, but discovers that he does not have it with him. Yamato already knows that he doesn’t have his phone, as it was out of batteries and needed to be charged. Hopelessly and stupidly lost, the two of them sigh long, heavy sighs that begin and end at approximately the same time.

“I’ve lived here my whole life, I feel like I should know anything about Queens,” Kakashi says. “Anything at all.” He reaches under the scarf he has wrapped around his neck and readjusts it so it’s not so tight. “I’m gonna ask for directions the next time we see someone.”

Yamato objects, claiming that he should be the one to ask, if either of them are going to. “No one is going to stop to talk to you when you’re walking around in 90 degree weather wearing a scarf and a safety mask.”

Kakashi adjusts his scarf again. “It’s light-weight,” he claims, despite the fact that his pale, sun-neglected face is flushed red from heat and sweating enough that you can see it on the collar of his shirt. “Look, I really don’t give a fuck, it’s not like it has to be me so just do it yourself and don’t use the opportunity to insult my fashion choices.”

When they do learn (from a woman who asks in three different ways what disease Kakashi is carrying that makes him wear a mask before she will actually answer their question) where the closest subway station is, and which bus they have to take to get to it, they wonder if it would be worth it to take a cab back instead. They quickly realize that it’s never worth it to take a cab, and they go wait for the bus.


	7. Coney Island Beach, Brooklyn - Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji

“I don’t want anyone to steal our stuff,” says Ino, pursing her lips at the throngs of people shambling around the beach. Choji laughs, and tells her not to worry about it. Shikamaru assures her that nobody wants her shitty flip flops from Payless, and Ino crosses her arms and harrumphs. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll swim. But when our Metro Cards get stolen and we can’t get on the train, we’ll have you two to blame.”

With one hand on her hip and the other slung underneath her purple bikini top, Ino pouts at the life guard and asks him if he can keep an eye on their things. “Y’know, I don’t think you have to flirt with him to get him to do that,” whispers Shikamaru. Ino shrugs. Choji ignores them, angling toward an old Latino man pushing a cart of Marino icees. Shikamaru shrugs, and pushes Ino toward the ocean.

“Swim,” he says. “Stop worrying.”

And so they swim. Well, not exactly. There are too many other people in the ocean to do much more than bob, and when they try to go out a little further, they’re brushed with waves of empty soda bottles, candy wrappers, and gnarled bits of plastic that may or may not have once been condoms. And seaweed. Lots of seaweed. Choji is enjoying picking up the seaweed with his toes and pulling it apart, while Shikamaru is completely ignoring the detritus and floating on his back. Ino is not ignoring anything. The garbage disgusts her. She hates Shikamaru for being too lazy to take the Long Island Railroad and go to Jones Beach instead of Coney Island. The trip is heinous either way, but Jones Beach, being not-disgusting, would have been worth it. Coney Island is fun if you want to shell out $50 on rides, but Ino’s going to need to shower for a year to get the grit from this filthy ocean out of her pores.

Nobody goes underwater for a while. It’s July, and the sun hasn’t been beating on the water long enough to warm it up. They know they won’t feel it so much if they just plunge in and get used to it, but none of them are brave enough. Ino shoves Choji’s shoulder, destabilizing him, making him knock into Shikamaru. Shikamaru falls under the garbage-laden waves, and shoots up, coughing and pounding his chest. “What the fuck Ino, you almost drowned me!” he shouts, angry for a shred of a second. Then he doesn’t care, and he’s splashing Choji and Ino both, and they’re splashing him back, and Choji dips under the water to lift Shikamaru up over his shoulder.

Suddenly, they’re being splashed by someone else. A fat, elderly woman in a navy blue bathing suit is screaming at the top of her lungs and sending waves of water at them. “FUCK YOU!” she shrieks, and then there’s something in Russian that they don’t understand. “WHAT THE FUCK IS YOU? FUCK OFF! YOU SPLASH ME! FUCK!” More Russian.

Choji puts Shikamaru down. “I’m sorry?” he says, his voice shaking in his throat. “It…it was an accident. I didn’t even realize I…was it me?” He looks at his friends, palms out, blinking and swallowing. Shikamaru cocks an eyebrow and tells the red-faced woman to calm down. Ino’s fingers fan around her mouth, and she bites her bottom lip trying not to laugh.

“FUCK! SHIT FUCK! SPLASH ME!” The woman keeps screaming and keeps splashing them, and it’s almost five minutes before she stops, chest heaving, mouth agape. She storms out of the ocean, stomping and screaming, and stands on the beach shaking her fist in their direction. The three stand stock-still in the ocean, blinking, grabbing for each other’s hands. Ino moves to leave the water and confront her, but Shikamaru sticks an arm in front of her and tells her to stay put. When the woman finally storms onto the boardwalk, the three of them laugh with shaking shoulders and spitty mouths.

“SHIT FUCK! SPLASH ME!” yells Ino, sending a wave of water toward Shikamaru.


	8. Fairway, Upper West Side, Manhattan - Sakura and Naruto

“But Sakura, I want to go to Trader Joe's. They have free samples! Fairway doesn't have free samples!” Naruto crosses his arms and blows his cheeks out, pouting. Sakura rolls her eyes and guides him away from Fairway exit, which he was just trying to use as an entrance. 

“Fairway does have free samples,” she says. “They always have a big basket of bread that you can dip in olive oil.”

“Olive oil is gross,” whines Naruto. “Trader Joe's had tortilla chips last time. And the time before that it had cake!” 

“Oh my god, we can go to Trader Joe's afterward! You just need to see Fairway because _there's a Fairway in goddamn Harlem which is within walking distance from where you goddamn live_. It's a good, cheap store, and it has a lot more variety than C-Town or wherever it is you normally shop.” 

“I _like_ C-Town,” mutters Naruto. This store doesn't look cheap to him. Half of the products are organic, and the other half looks imported from European nations. He wrinkles his nose at the rows of fruits and vegetables, and the display of Naked and Odwalla juice. “This stuff is gross. Are you going to make me buy vegetables again?” 

“Yes, Naruto, I'm going to make you buy vegetables.” When Naruto complains that vegetables are too expensive, Sakura says she'll pitch in for it if she has to. “You're malnourished, and you have no idea how to shop. I'm trying to help you, so stop whining so much. Anyway, the Fairway that's close to you is pretty much the same as this one, except that I think your Fairway has a meat locker.” 

“Do they sell ramen?” Naruto drifts over to the basket of Italian bread, and gnaws on a piece without dipping it in the oil. Sakura buries her face in her hands and sighs. She tells them that they probably do have ramen, but that that's not what they're there to buy. “Ugh, Sakuraaaa, you're so mean,” whines Naruto, his mouth full of free bread. She grabs his arm and drags him back to the rows of fruits. Colorful pieces of cardboard tell the story of how each fruit was discovered and obtained. Sakura asks Naruto to read them, but as soon as she opens her mouth she realizes this was a pointless request. 

She rolls her eyes and loads apples into a produce bag. After selecting a few more fruits, she moves onto the vegetables. When Naruto protests, Sakura says, “look, if you let me buy you some actual food, I'll buy you candy. They have a bunch of candies from Canada and England up at the register, you can pick whatever you want and I'll buy it. Is that a deal?” 

Sakura is frowning, obviously annoyed. Naruto doesn't want Sakura spending so much money on him. It reminds him of a very important difference between the two of them. Sakura has a credit card that her upper-class parents will gladly pay off. Naruto has a credit card that's maxed out from rent and electricity payments. Sakura can afford to buy vegetables, candy, whatever she wants. Naruto survives off fourteen-cent bags of Top Ramen from C-Town. All the same, he accepts her deal. “Just don't buy me any broccoli,” he says. “That's the nastiest vegetable of all.” 

“Broccoli is completely non-offensive!” yells Sakura. Naruto laughs, and guides her toward the checkout line.


	9. An independently owned coffee shop that is not called “Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf”, god dammit, Flatiron, Manhattan - Itachi, Tobirama

Itachi sits in the corner of a café he’s never been in before (“The Tea Bean”, subtitled “aka The Coffee Leaf”), sipping a fairly adequate cup of coffee that smells a lot better than it tastes. Based on the (cheesy and borderline copyright-infringing) name he expected them to put equal emphasis on coffee and tea, but their tea selection is pathetic; the five different boxes of Tazo and one box of Ten Ren pouchong standing on a rack next to a stack of paper cups are, according to the guy at the register, the only types they have today. It’s possible but unlikely that he came here on a bad day; maybe they ran out of everything else and haven’t found time to replace it yet. Itachi doesn’t know how this place operates. But either way, they make such an effort to brag about how they roast their own beans, they have an entire wall lined with bulging burlap sacks of them, the place smells so much like coffee that any tea they sell here probably tastes like coffee instead. Why do they even sell tea, let alone advertise it in the name of the shop?

The atmosphere is alright, the best features being a wall-to-wall mural of a field of prancing rams and the fact that there are only three other customers here. Two of them are huddled in the corner, talking into each other’s ears in scream-whispers that they don’t think anyone else can hear. The third person is alone, hasn’t bought anything, and is probably only here to make use of their WiFi, which he is trying to access on his phone (it’s either an iPhone or an iPod touch, he can’t tell without his glasses on.)

Itachi still isn’t sure whether it makes more sense to embrace or avoid crowds. He’s more likely to find someone he knows in a large crowd, but if he does, they probably won’t see him, and even if they do, he’ll be gone before they realize it. If someone he knows is in a small, unpopulated place, like where he is right now, there won’t be much to distract them from him. It might even be several minutes before Itachi realizes that they’ve stopped messing with their phone and have been glaring at him for several minutes now.

“You’re an idiot,” the person, who Itachi has finally realized is Tobirama Senju, says. Itachi hasn’t seen him in at least eight years, and is amazed to see him in a place like this. He hesitates to acknowledge his greeting, wonders if he could get away with pretending to be someone else. But if Obito has taught him anything over the years, it’s that tricking old people is terrible, no matter why you’re doing it, no matter how easy it is or is not to do it. If you’re so certain you can trick them in the moment, you might as well tell them the truth, because they won’t remember it soon enough anyway. If not, then you won’t get away with it because they are smarter than you. Either way, you should have enough respect for your elders not to lie to them. “I shouldn’t have to give you a reason not to be a jerk to old people,” Obito had explained, “I’m only bothering because Shisui is a lying little shitbird who needs a ten page dissuasive essay per person he wants to trick, and he might influence you.”

Itachi spends so long contemplatively staring at the ground that if he lies now, it’ll be obvious. He realizes this, looks up at his family’s old business partner, and asks him how he is.

“You’re not doing a very good job of running away, are you?” Tobirama says. For an 85-or-so year old man, he stands surprisingly upright. “Tell me you haven’t been in the city this whole time.”

“No.” Itachi replies. “I left for a while.”

Tobirama clicks his tongue, narrows his eyes. “So the new plan is getting caught, is it?”

Itachi is incredibly grateful that Tobirama chose to start this conversation in Japanese, which presumably no one else in the room can understand.

“I…no,” he claims. He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t think I should get caught?”

“You’re clearly not smart enough to be the one who really killed them,” Tobirama explains. “Otherwise you’d be in another country by now.” He looks down at Itachi’s table, at his cup of half-finished coffee. “And you wouldn’t have given any money to this shitty café.”

“If that’s a problem, why are you here?”

“To use the bathroom and steal the WiFi,” Tobirama says. “It looks nice from the outside, though, doesn’t it?”

“I give it a two out of five, for the sheep mural.”

“You’re too generous.”

“Isn’t there another place with almost exactly the same name on the Upper West Side?”

“Yes. I’m not impressed with them either. But at least they sell everything they advertise.”

When it comes to beverages strained in hot water, Tobirama is impossible to impress. Itachi has been there before, and he thought it was pretty nice.

“Are you going to tell anyone that I was here?” Itachi asks.

Tobirama’s nearly-smooth, hardly-wrinkled face hasn’t caught up with his age; years of making one facial expression per week at maximum have probably helped halt that process. “Do you want me to?”

Itachi doesn’t answer at first. “No,” he requests, after the pause. “Please.”

And he doesn’t, which is great, because Itachi isn’t interested in going to prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is an actual establishment with several locations in places besides New York City. The character's opinions of these establishments have nothing do with our, the authors, opinions, because I (the baxaronn author) have never been there before and don't have an opinion about it.
> 
> The Tea Bean and Coffee Leaf is not and in fact does not exist at all.


	10. Stapleton, Staten Island - Suigetsu

“Why do you keep asking me this? Are you stupid or something?” 

This was Suigetsu's mother's response when he asked her if he could have a cat for the thirty-seventh time that week. Thirty-seven is, he'll admit, kind of a lot. But he really wants a goddamn cat. He's been denied the joy of a furry beast that will lie on his stomach and purr and then scratch him when he tries to pet it for much too long. There are plenty of feral, inbred cats slinking around his feces-and-rusty-dented-bean-can covered yard, but none of them have names that he knows of, none of them live in his shitty basement, none of them are _his_. It's not the same. He sighs and crosses his arms. “Mom, come on, _please?_ I'll feed it, I'll clean the cat box, I'll do everything. Just let me have a cat.” 

“No!” Suigetsu's mother angles a huge plastic bowl so that it can be washed in their tiny sink, and turns around to stare him down. “I'm not worried about who's going to take care of it. You can't have a cat because _you are allergic to cats_. Don't blame me for the actions of your immune system.” 

Suigetsu sighs. The fact that he's allergic to cats is completely irrelevant. The fur of the feral cats is so enmeshed with the mold in his basement bedroom that he's constantly stuffed up and sniffly. He wants a cat because he wants to justify his symptoms. He wants a cat because he saw a rat skitter across his floor two nights ago. He wants a cat because cats are nice. 

Whatever. He's going to get a cat whether his mother likes it or not. He spends too much time commuting from Staten Island to Brooklyn every day to get a job, so he doesn't have any money and won't be able to afford an adoption fee. This leaves him with a single choice. He will capture one of the scraggly, inbred cats that live in his yard and on the surrounding block, and make it his pet. 

That night, when his mother is so deeply asleep that she won't be woken up by passing motorcycle gangs or the screaming kids next door, Suigetsu sneaks outside. He carries plateful of leftover chicken, and sets it down on the brick porch. His upstairs neighbor is sitting on the railing, smoking a cigarette and staring out into the horizon with unfocused eyes. He isn't wearing pants. Suigetsu ignores him, and waits patiently for one of the cats. 

After fifteen minutes, a cat so jet black that it looks like a cat-shaped hole in the universe appears. His pupils are oddly round. This is unusual for a cat, but Suigetsu likes it. He has strange hair, strange teeth, strange everything, so this cat with weird pupils is perfect. It makes him sneeze fifteen times in a row, which isn't perfect, but he can live with it. “Here kitty kitty kitty,” he whispers, after blowing his nose on his shirt. “Do you want some yummy chicken? I'll bet you do. Come get some chicken.” 

The cat sniffs the plate, then backs up on slightly twisted legs. She tries again, and drags a slice of chicken off the plate. The chicken breaks apart in her mouth, and she seems to struggle with swallowing it, but within a few minutes, the plate is clean. Sniffling, Suigetsu strokes the grateful cat's head. Just as she's about to claim his hand for her own, Suigetsu's neighbor stomps over to him, grabs the plate, and smashes it to the ground, screaming, _“fuck off you shit-ass stray! Get the fuck off my property!”_ The cat bolts from the porch, and disappears into an alley way. The plate is broken, but most of it has fallen into a nearby patch of gravel, and it's too dark to find the pieces. The neighbor takes his place on the railing, utterly silent. 

“Dude, you're fucking crazy,” Suigetsu mutters, letting himself back into the house. The cat, who he had already decided was named Longsword, would probably not be coming back. He would have to try again later.


	11. Zuccotti Park, Manhattan - Yahiko and Konan

“One day, the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich!” shouts Yahiko through a red-and-white striped bullhorn. His daughter, a spindly five-year-old in an oversized green t-shirt that says “We are the 99%”, clings to his leg and shouts “the rich taste like pizza!” His wife, Konan, hands out pamphlets to passersby and smiles blandly. “We will not stand by and allow corporations to steal from us any longer! Death to the capitalist pigs on Wall Street!” yells Yahiko. When a cluster of protesters give him funny looks, Konan whispers that this isn’t a communist rally.

“Death to the capless piggies,” mutters their daughter, grinning to herself and folding one of her mother’s pamphlets infinitely in half. “Daddy, where did their caps go? Do piggies even have caps?” Yahiko clamps a hand on top of her head, and methodically ruffles her black hair. Usually, he would think this was hilarious, but just now he’s busy shouting death to Wall Street, death to debt, death to low taxes for the rich and high taxes for the poor, death to shitty expensive health care. He wants to shout death to many other things, but Occupy Wall Street is not, as Konan keeps reminding him, a vehicle for his every political grievance. There are other movements that will kill the other things he wants to kill. Right now, he’s here to show his daughter how to be an activist, he’s here to get pictures for Nagato’s website, and he’s here for Nagato, because Nagato’s medical debt is an unpayable atrocity.

The kids in the tents scattered all over Zuccotti Park, these are the youth of America taking responsibility for itself. This is what Yahiko wants his daughter to do when she’s old enough to make her own choices. He wants her to always stand her ground, to always fight for her beliefs no matter how unlikely her success. He wants her to fight not just for money, but for every cause that speaks to her, for every friend she meets who needs her help. And Yahiko will do anything he can to show her how. When she’s old enough to solidify her beliefs he will tattoo them across her back for her if she desires. Right now, he’s holding her hand in Zuccotti Park, shouting phrases into a megaphone that she doesn’t understand, but will, one day, if he and Konan raise her right. When she’s old enough to know what to fight for she will stand in the streets shouting phrases of her own.

 

“Give people jobs you stupid bank guys!” she yells, shaking her tiny fist in the air. Yahiko grins. Yeah, they’re raising her right.


	12. Manhattan Bridge - Deidara and Obito

Sometimes Deidara likes it when people watch him defacing public property. Sometimes he doesn’t. Today, he doesn’t.

Even when he doesn’t want an audience, the problem isn’t being watched so much as the possibility of people interrupting him, which is a problem when he’s halfway across the Manhattan Bridge and it’s so windy that his giant mass of hair won’t stay out of his face for more than thirty seconds. It’s hard enough to concentrate without obscured vision, and no manner of tying his hair behind his head will keep it completely out of his eyes. He has to keep his hand as steady as possible if he wants the stream of spray paint marking all the right places. So when some random asshole walks up behind him and taps him on the shoulder, it breaks his concentration and his finger slips, and now there’s a dripping green cloud where the last letter of what he was writing was supposed to be. The random asshole says “woah,” and then he says “sorry,” and Deidara turns around to see he’s some stupid looking dipshit with a goofy smile on his lips and a scar instead of the right half of his face and a misting of more green paint in his short black hair. The wind must have thrown it at him.

“I don’t usually ask people about the laws they’re breaking, but the thing you’re writing?” he says, ending the last part of the sentence like it’s a complete statement. “I see that all over the place! Is that always you or what?”

The word is “Katsu,” the U at the end a splattered mess that looks kind of awesome now that he’s had a chance to observe it. Deidara clicks his tongue and shoves the paint can back into his bag. “Hell no,” he says, not zipping it closed before flipping the flap over the opening. “I’ve never even met him. I like the word so I write it in places. Not my fault he does it too, and that people know who he is.”

The stupid looking dipshit giggles a little. “I wonder how he feels about someone else making his signature more popular?” he muses, finger contemplatively tapping his lip and everything. “Or are you doing that on purpose?”

“No I am not doing that on purpose!” Deidara snaps. “It’s not like it matters if anyone knows if it’s his or not, it’s just going to be painted over again anyway! Do you see where I put this?” He points dramatically at his work, which the stranger will now observe is painted over another copy of the same word, in black text instead of green, and in a different style of handwriting. “Do you understand what the beauty of graffiti is? Huh? It’s the fact that it is so easily destroyed! No one will ever see it again, once it’s been replaced by another piece! It will only exist in the creator and the few observer’s memories!”

He takes a deep breath before he continues. “I feel _sorry_ for those graffiti artists whose art has been recognized! Removed from its original location, left to suffer and stagnate in an art museum! Edited into repeating patterns and printed onto T-Shirts! Endlessly available for consumption as photographs on the internet! _Altered slightly to look vintage on Instagram!_ At least my art, even the stuff that’s creative, even the ones that could be considered aesthetically pleasing, are _likely_ to be painted over by someone else, trying to clean the wall I ruined or trying to ruin it even further! That is what gives it meaning, the fact that it was destroyed so easily!”

The stranger looks confused, his smile more awkward than amused. “Uh,” he says. “Ha ha,” he laughs. “You’re really mad,” he observes. “It kinda sounds like you just like ruining other peoples stuff,” he accuses. “You got paint on your shirt,” he observes.

“How are you killing the other guy’s art or whatever if all you’re doing is replacing it with the same thing?” he asks.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you any further!” Deidara says. “Hmph!” he harrumphs. “You just don’t understand because you’re an idiot. I bet when you go to art museums, you’re impressed by everything there, just because it’s supposed to be art!”

“Ahaa, I haven’t been to a museum in months!” the stranger laughs. “Whenever I have free time I usually use it on writing music. I do that, you know! We’re both artists, sort of, I guess! Cool, huh?”

Deidara smirks, flips his hair over his shoulder and gets green paint flakes on his hand. They rain down his back and dust all over his shirt. “Music is all right, I guess. I have a lot of respect for performance art. But you probably record all of your music, right? With the intention of selling it, so that people can listen to the same sound over and over again? Even though the natural state of sound is to be impermanent and intangible in such a way that you can immediately observe it?”

“Yeah, that.”

“You make me sick.”

“You are such a hipster doofus.”

_“I’m not a fucking hipster you stupid piece of shit!”_


	13. Brooklyn Technical High School, Track overhanging the Gym - Gai, Lee, Neji, and Ten Ten

“You’re doing brilliantly, my precious student!” trills Gai, wrapping Lee into a sweaty hug. Lee has just been barreling along the rickety track that hangs over the first floor gym, his lap count surpassing that of all of his classmates, including Neji Hyuuga, one of the best runners in 12th grade. Lee wraps his arms around his teacher’s broad shoulders, and the two of them spout raptures about Lee’s success. His other students, panting and sweating in their mandatory Brooklyn Tech gym uniforms, plop to the ground, having given up entirely.

Gai disentangles himself from his embrace with Lee, and clamps his hands forcefully onto the shoulders of Ten Ten, a student who is gulping down the contents of a crushed Poland Spring water bottle. “Good job, Ten Ten! You’ve got the spirit of youth in you, that’s for sure!” He squeezes her shoulder and grins. Ten Ten smirks and says, “okay Mr. Maito, just don’t ever make us do that again, okay?”

“You’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow, except it will be even more intense! We’ve got to get that youthful blood pumping!” Gai raises a fist to the ceiling, then flashes a victory sign at his students. “Everybody get up!” he says, grabbing a grumpy redhead by the arm. “Get up, we’re running another 20 laps before the bell rings! Make sure that you record your lap count in your binders before you go! Let’s go, let’s go! Up up up!” The students reluctantly struggle to their feet, except for Lee, who hadn’t been sitting in the first place and who quickly becomes a firecracker exploding across the track, and Neji, who gets up immediately and starts to run without complaint.

Gai, who finds it difficult to stand still for more than a few minutes at a time, does jumping jacks while he watches his students run. This is difficult to do between shouting inspiring phrases about the majesty of youth, but he manages. He is forced to stop, however, when the AP of Physical and Health Education* walks up the stairs to the track platform, and clears her throat. She is holding several folders, and her plucked eyebrows are knitted with concern. “Excuse me,” she says. “Mr. Maito? You and I need to have a discussion. When do you have a free period?”

“The kids are running until the end of the period, and they’re supposed to keep track of their own progress. We can talk now!” He does not stop doing jumping jacks while talking to the AP, until she requests it, irritation creeping into her tone. She coughs.

“I’ll agree to that only because I don’t know if we can easily arrange a better time. However, Mr. Maito, I will need your full attention for this conversation. It’s serious.” Her lips purse even harder.

Gai scratches his chin in an attempt to look thoughtful. “Serious, you say? What’s serious? It’s not like I have to prepare my students for the Regents or anything, and they’re all doing just fine in my class.”

“Well,” says the AP, her chest rising a little, and her one hand that isn’t holding a folder curling into a fist. “It’s about the way that you interact with your students. I have observed you with them on multiple occasions, and it isn’t—” Gai cuts her off to yell at Ten Ten to stop dumping water all over her head or else she’ll make the track slippery. “It isn’t appropriate,” huffs the AP.

“What isn’t appropriate?” asks Gai, raising an eyebrow.

“Your conduct! With your students!” The AP coughs again, and tells the gaggle of students craning their necks to hear what the yelling is about to keep running. She cups a hand around her mouth and whispers, “you are far too physically intimate with them. I was watching you for less than ten minutes, and in that time I saw you hug one student, pat another on the shoulder, and grab a girl’s arm. That hug wasn’t chaste, either. It looked like you were hugging your girlfriend.”

“Oh! Don’t worry about that. I was simply trying to show my pride in my student! Lee has come so far! In just one semester, he went from running the fewest laps in a period to running the most! That’s the power of hard work.” Gai gives a thumbs up sign to Lee as he passes by, and Lee waves to him, sweat shining on his forehead.

“That’s great. I’m happy for him. But that’s not the point. The point is that you are touching your students inappropriately. You’re going to have to start showing your…” She gulps, staring down at her shiny red high heels. “Pride…in some other way. You never know if a student is going to interpret it the wrong way. You could lose your job.”

“I have tenure!” shouts Gai. A cluster of exhausted students stare at him. One, a skinny girl with blue streaks in her brown hair, says she wishes he didn’t. She wants him to be fired because the other gym teachers don’t make her work so hard. “Anyway, this is clearly nonsexual. Physical fitness is physical. How am I supposed to help them carve their bodies into fine specimens of youth if I’m just hovering around them like a hummingbird? To do this work, you have to get in there, and get dirty.” Pointing to the track, he yells, “Escarlin! Get down from the railing, you’re going to fall! Svetlana, help her down! Sorry, you were saying?” He turns back to the AP.

“Look, Mr. Maito, I know that you’re not doing anything to hurt these children. But an outsider might misinterpret your….carving their bodies into fine specimens of youth. The way you describe it is a bit…odd, don’t you think?” She shoves her glasses up the slope of her nose, and clears her throat. “It sounds like something that a pedophile might say. I assume that I won’t find out that I’m wrong about your good intentions. Regardless, you need to change your behavior if you want to stay out of trouble.” She sighs. “So. No hugging. No touching of any kind unless it directly relates to the lesson. Even then, avoid it when possible. Please.”

“Yes ma’am! I will try my utmost!” Gai salutes the AP. She clicks down the stairs, certain that her words have made no impact whatsoever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The AP of Physical and Health Education in this story is fictional, and bears no intentional resemblance to the real person holding that job at Brooklyn Technical High School.


	14. Naruto Ramen, Park Slope, Brooklyn - Naruto and Gaara

“Pretty please with a scallion on top?” asks Naruto, batting his eyelashes. He's trying to look cute, perhaps, but it isn't working. The harried waitress stares at him with bugged-out eyes, and asks if he has a coupon. No, he does not have a coupon. According to one of the cooks stirring a giant pot of noodles behind the bar, there are no coupons. The waitress is new. She tells Naruto that there's no way he's getting a free meal. That if he wants soup, he's going to have to pay for it.

“But my name is Naruto,” he whines. “Just like your store! Shouldn't I get something?” The waitress shakes her head, and the cook stifles a snicker. 

“Is that actually your name? Like the swirly fish thing?” asks the cook. Naruto nods, his lips pressed angrily together. The cook shoots a look at the waitress, and both of them wiggle their eyebrows and twist up their faces, obviously trying not to laugh. 

Naruto whips out his Brooklyn Tech student ID, and points to his name. “See? Look! Naruto Uzumaki, that's my name! I thought that a place called Naruto Ramen would at least give me a discount.” Gaara, Naruto's companion, gives a short cough, and tells Naruto that if he'll be quiet, he'll pay for his meal. “Really?! Wow, you're the best Gaara!” A grin zippers across Naruto's face, and he gathers Gaara into a violent hug. 

Gaara had invited Naruto out solely because of his name. His sister had been pressuring him to make friends at Brooklyn Tech, but he found it difficult to think of anything to say to his classmates. He had wanted to avoid Naruto in particular because he was loud and obnoxious, but when he found out what his name was, he changed his mind. As he was so boisterously screaming at the waitress, Naruto had the same name as this restaurant. This amused Gaara, and gave him cause to speak to Naruto. It wasn't easy finding reasons to talk to people, so he'd take anything, really.

Their soup arrives. Predictably, Naruto ordered the house specialty, a soy-based soup called Naruto Ramen. Gaara has curry ramen, the same thing that he orders every time he comes here with his siblings. Temari always tries to get him to try the rest of the menu, but he likes curry. Naruto steals Gaara's tea egg and his fish cake, and he peeps excitedly about the soundless Miyazaki film playing in the back of the restaurant. “I love this movie!” he says, spraying broth into the air. Gaara blinks, sips his soup, and thinks about smiling. He grinds up some sesame seeds and drops them into his soup, while Naruto loads his up with chips of garlic. “So did you do the essay for Mr. Sarutobi's class yet?” asks Naruto. Gaara nods, popping a bamboo shoot into his mouth. “Oh sweet, can I copy it?” Gaara shakes his head, and Naruto whines at him. Within five minutes he's shouting about how his ramen is the best thing he's ever tasted, and how it was totally worth traveling all the way from Washington Heights, and how Gaara is his new best friend for taking him here. 

Gaara doesn't have to do anything, or say anything. Naruto just talks, while Gaara listens. Gaara doesn't object when Naruto orders a second bowl of soup, and Gaara pays the bill, and suddenly, apparently, they're friends. 

Gaara has a friend.


	15. 1, 2, and 3 Chambers Street Station, Manhattan - Kakashi, Rin, and Obito

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the events in this chapter take place approximately 16 years earlier than everything else
> 
> this chapter is rated Violence for people being injured by things

Kakashi has been taking the 1 train from Chambers street every day since October, even though he doesn’t like it. It’s really slow, every day, all the time, and it’s frustrating having to watch the 2 and 3 trains pulling in every three minutes while the 1 remains conspicuously absent. On the occasions when he actually wants to take the 2 or 3, the only train that shows up is the 1, and there’s at least one of them every fifteen seconds. Obito said that that’s exactly why he doesn’t like taking the A, because the only train that ever shows up is the C, unless that’s the one he’s waiting for, in which case the only train that ever shows up is the A. So, since waiting for any train is essentially the same experience, the 1 train is closer to their school, and Rin would rather take the 1 because it’s closer to the other trains at 42nd street than the A is, there’s no point in walking more to get to the stupid A train, which is way louder than like every other train in the entire city anyway and no one likes it except for Kakashi. He still argued that the A station he would get off at is closer to his apartment than the 1 station, but he eventually acquiesced because that inconvenience isn’t as big as Rin having to trudge through the labyrinth that is the 42nd street station so she can get the R. He’s not selfish enough to make her do that.

Also against Kakashi’s preference, they always wait at the head of the station instead of the back. They used to wait at the back, as a compromise, because Kakashi didn’t get what he wanted in regard to which train to take, but they had to move for Obito related reasons. Kakashi likes waiting in the back because he likes being able to watch for approaching headlights; Obito also likes doing this, but when the train doesn’t come in what he considers to be a timely fashion, he starts whining about it. At the other end he can’t see the tunnel very well, so he doesn’t watch it obsessively, and the three of them can have a conversation that isn’t interrupted every three seconds by Obito asking why the MTA can’t get its shit together enough to make sure there is a train available every time he needs one.

“I mean, seriously, why isn’t everything centered around me?” he asks today, landing at the bottom of the stairs and not seeing a train waiting for him with open doors. “I’m, like, the most important person in the world, right? Why don’t the trains know when I’m going to be here?”

Rin giggles into her hand and smiles at him. “Maybe they should call it OTA, for Obito Transit Authority,” she suggests.

Kakashi, not nearly as amused, shoves Obito’s shoulder and calls him a dumbass. “I’d think you were funny if you didn’t make this joke every single day,” he explains, shoving him again and striding away from the staircase to make way for more descending passengers. Obito and Rin laugh and run to catch up with him, even though he’s only a few feet ahead of them, and Obito smacks him on the back of the head with a sock he pulled out of the drawstring bag he keeps his gym clothes in. Kakashi yelps and spins around, rubbing his scalp like it’s in pain. The lights above them flicker slightly, but they don’t obscure Obito flipping him off and grinning like a shithead who deserves to be grabbed by the shoulders and pressed against the blue column near the platform edge with the sign that says “WET PAI” because the NT was torn off by someone who wanted to tear something in half without actually accomplishing anything creative in the process. But Kakashi is fourteen years old, and he’s more mature than that, so instead he snatches Obito’s sock out of his hand and throws it in his face and runs, expecting to be chased as he weaves his way between people and around more sticky blue columns towards the appropriate end of the station, as per the agreement.

And, as he expected, his friends are right behind him, Rin not really running so much as walking briskly and quickly losing pace with Obito, who is practically sprinting in his efforts to catch up to the guy who quite justifiably threw a sock at his face. There are too many people here, and every time either of them brush past someone who’s not expecting to be bombarded with running children, they get yelled at, or called reckless idiots, or told to watch where they’re going. But they don’t, and no one but Kakashi and Obito is surprised when Kakashi slips on a puddle of water he doesn’t notice, twists his ankle trying to steady himself, and smashes his head against the hard, muddy floor when he falls into the tracks.

The instant Rin realizes what’s happened, she runs in the opposite direction, screaming for someone to help her friend, he’s just fallen into the tracks, he’s gonna get hit by a train. Obito doesn’t wait for someone else to help, he immediately leaps off the edge of the platform and lands with one foot on the track and one foot on the ground. He trips, but the bruise he gets landing on his ass doesn’t make him lose consciousness like Kakashi did. Obito can hardly lift him high enough to get him above his own head, but someone only comes over to help after he’s been struggling for several minutes. The tunnels start to get windy when they reach down and grab Kakashi’s arms. This person isn’t very strong, and it takes the two of them a while to get Kakashi back onto the platform; by the time they do, the train is pulling into the station.

Obito closes his eyes.

One of them opens again three days later.


	16. City College campus, Hamilton Heights/Harlem, Manhattan - Karin, Kurotsuchi, and Juugo

“No, I’m not a student, I’m just looking around, jesus christ,” Karin says. “What’s it to you anyway?”

“Calm your shit, kid, I’m just asking because you look familiar,” Kurotsuchi responds, sitting down next to her addressee on the lawn in front of one of the eight thousand buildings of the City College campus. Okay, there aren’t nearly that many buildings, but Karin has never been here before and she doesn’t remember what this one is called. It’s one of the pretty Gothic ones instead of the weird blocky slab-o’-concrete ones, is what she knows without looking at the sign out in front. Her glasses slide down the bridge of her nose and she adjusts them while this random jerk adjusts her ass so she’s not sitting on her own feet anymore like how she was when she first plopped down next to her like she was invited to hang out or something. Karin sneers at her, tells her they’ve never met before, and sneers a little more just for good measure.

Undeterred and unconvinced, Kurotsuchi points to her own face and leans in close to Karin’s shoulder with the side of her head. “Are you sure? Kurotsuchi, do you recognize that name? I’m totally positive I’ve at least _seen_ you before.”

“I don’t know!” Karin scoots across the grass to get away from her unwanted visitor. “Maybe you have seen me! It’s a big city, it’s not like it’s impossible that we’ve been in the same place at the same time before!”

Kurotsuchi frowns, sits up straight again, starts pulling grass out of the ground absentmindedly. “Yeah, guess you’re right,” she admits. “But I swear to god I’ve seen you before, I don’t know, whatever.” She gathers enough grass that she has a fistful and then throws it over her shoulder. “So if you’re not a student here, then what are you doing? Waiting for someone? Get lost from your tour group? Trespassing? What’s your deal?”

“Independent tour because I was in the neighborhood and I got bored,” Karin explains. A slight breeze makes the grass ripple towards the entrance of the building that she still doesn’t know the name of, in the direction of the northern entrance to the campus where she arrived here twenty minutes ago. She had walked around for a few minutes and then decided to park herself on the lawn for a little while and make herself look at everything before she just walked straight past it. A sign driven into the ground invites people to use the lawn at their leisure, as long as they aren’t using it to play sports, but Karin went ahead and sat down before she noticed that she had permission to be there, assuming that the ten or so other people were only there because no one was stopping them. She is impressed that the school has a lawn. It’s very nice.

“You’re not thinking of going here, are you?” scoffs Kurotsuchi. “It’s my first year here, I’m only here because I didn’t get into the school I wanted to go to. Fucking sucks.”

“Well I’m gonna apply here, but I don’t care about it more than anywhere else, I don’t…why am I telling you anything? I didn’t say I wanted to keep talking to you!”

“Whatever, we’re having a conversation.”

“Yeah well, I told you to leave me alone and you didn’t! You’re rude as hell!”

“ _I’m_ rude?” Kurotsuchi cocks an eyebrow. “I ask you a simple question, you immediately tell me to fuck off, and _I’m_ rude?”

“Yes, you are!”

“What the hell is even your— oh look, it’s bird guy.”

Karin follows Kurotsuchi’s pointing finger to one of the people she had seen sitting on the lawn when she first arrived here. His hair is a violent peroxide-orange and he looks like he’d be eighty feet tall if he stood up, and the length of both of his shoulders is occupied by a line of small birds. He lifts one of his arms to scratch the top of his head, and the birds on his corresponding shoulder lift off briefly to make room for him to move, and then land again when he’s done. Hanging out around his leg is a squirrel (with black fur, a color that Karin did not know squirrels came in), as well as three or four more birds and a small mammal that may or may not also be a squirrel.

“If I don’t get into Columbia next year, it won’t be so bad having to stay here if I can watch this dude drown in birds every day,” Kurotsuchi says in a tone just above a whisper. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is agape, and Karin’s face isn’t much different. “I think he’s a freshman too, so by the time you’re in college he’ll probably still be here.”

For what seems like several minutes but is more like thirty seconds, Karin stares, mesmerized by this gigantic human being and the small army of birds perched all over his body. The spell is broken when her glasses slide halfway down her nose. She pushes them back up and then turns to look at Kurotsuchi again. “Why would I choose what college I go to based on how friendly the birds are?” She stands up abruptly and turns around to leave. “Nice to meet you, good bye.”

“I can’t wait to see you again,” she hears Kurotsuchi say from somewhere behind her. Karin tries very hard not to look back as she walks away, suddenly embarrassed by how angry she got over something that’s actually pretty trivial, now that she thinks about it. But she does, anyway, because she wants to see the bird guy one more time. She can’t see his face because he’s facing the opposite direction, but he looks really familiar for some reason. Maybe she’s seen him somewhere before.


	17. Times Square, Manhattan - Sai, Naruto, and Sakura

“Ms. Samui said that we had to draw a building. She did not say that we had to go to do it in the most crowded part of Manhattan.” Sakura sighs, and hugs her sketchbook to her chest. “I hate Times Square. It's always crawling with tourists.” 

“Tourists who think it makes sense to stop random people they don't know and ask them to take their picture with fancy cameras!” yelps Naruto. “For real, if I weren't such a stand-up guy, I could have stolen like fifty cameras already.” 

“Well, if you get bored then you can steal cameras,” says Sai, pushing past a pack of blonde Midwestern pre-teens with matching school shirts. Once Naruto and Sakura weave past the crowd to catch up with him, he says, “I want to challenge myself and draw a crowd. Samui's assignments are too easy for someone with my talent. I can draw a building with no trouble, what I want to do is draw a scene.” 

“But why this scene?” moans Sakura. “Why Times Square? It smells like car exhaust, it's broiling hot, and there's nowhere to sit.” 

“Um, excuse me, it also smells like overcooked hotdogs and stale pretzels,” says Naruto, gesturing toward a cart being tended by a sleepy-looking middle aged man wearing a turban. He mumbles an entreaty to buy, but they all ignore him. “Last time I bought one of those hot dogs I got food poisoning. Also it cost like $4 which is stupid.” Naruto sighs heavily. “Times Square sucks. We should have gone to my neighborhood, then we could have drawn the City College buildings. They're super pretty.” 

“My neighborhood has some really nice buildings too,” says Sakura. “We could be sitting the in the park drawing the Natural History Museum from a distance. That would be so much nicer than...this.” Sakura stares down at her foot, which has just plunged into a splash of vomit. “EWW!” she shrieks. “Oh god gross gross gross.” She scrapes her shoe along the sidewalk in an attempt to clean it. “See what I mean?”

“No one's forcing you to stay here. I asked you to come and you agreed to do so.” Sai shrugs, and keeps walking. They pass by a teenager asking for weed money, a young woman dressed like the statue of liberty and standing stock-still while tourists drop coins in a nearby box, and a teenager with blue hair and a dirty face sitting on the sidewalk, suitcases gathered close. No one looks at anyone, though Sakura does drop a few coins in the young girl's battered coffee cup. Sai leads them for a few crowded blocks until they read an oasis of red metal tables and chairs. “If you want to stay, we can sit down here. If not, you can get on the train and go home.” 

This is easier said than done. Most of the seats are taken up by tour groups, and those that aren't are full up anyway. A few are taken up by small children standing on them. They finally find one table with one seat, and Sai sits down without asking Naruto or Sakura if they would like to sit. Grumbling, Sakura finds two loose chairs for herself and Naruto, and drags them over to Sai's table. They sit down, staring ahead at the glowing advertisements and flashy restaurants, The Bank of America and the Walgreen's dressed up as prettily as a Broadway theater. Sai takes out his sketchbook, a mechanical pencil, and an eraser. He sketches a rough outline of the crowd of tables, and Naruto gawks in amazement. “How are you so good at this? I suck at drawing. I can barely draw stick figures.”

“Practice.” Sai shrugs. “Also my dick is bigger than yours. That might have something to do with it.” Naruto shakes a fist at him and shouts vague threats until Sakura kicks him in the ankle and tells him to shut up.

“There's a cop right there,” she hisses. “Just draw. And Sai, stop talking about your dick. I'm better than both of you and I don't even have one.”


	18. Park Slope, Brooklyn - Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara

“Let's get frozen yogurt,” suggests Kankuro, sweaty face buried in a damp, creased throw pillow. “It's fucking hot.” 

Temari shrugs, peeling her bare back off the couch. She wipes sweat from her forehead, and sighs. “That sounds like a good idea until you factor in that we'd have to move.” 

“Not far! There's a frozen yogurt place like three blocks from here.” Kankuro gestures vaguely toward the window, forcing Temari to look out into the harsh sun. She turns back toward her brother.

“Is there? There are like fifty fucking frozen yogurt places in this neighborhood, I can't keep track of them. I don't want to go to one that sucks just because it's nearby. If we're going to go, we have to go to a good one.” Temari stands up, knees knocking into Gaara's head. Gaara is seated on the floor next to the couch, eyes closed, breath shallow. “Sorry Gaara. Hey when was the last time you had something to drink? You too, dumbass.” 

Kankuro points to a 2-liter bottle of Slice. “I've been drinking that,” he says. “Dunno about Gaara.” 

“Orange soda is not even remotely hydrating you stupid piece of...whatever. I don't care. Gaara, have you been drinking water?” Gaara nods. “Okay, just make sure it's enough. I'm going to fill up a water bottle for you before we leave.”

“Pretty sure he can manage that himself,” says Kankuro, rolling his eyes. “So where do you wanna go? Pearl Gate's the closest.” 

“I don't want to go to Pearl Gate. They're always so...nice. They act like you're doing them the biggest favor in the world when all you're doing is buying frozen yogurt. It feels like you should be doing more but you're not because you're a big jerk.” Temari stands up to adjust the setting on the ceiling fan, then thunks down next to Gaara on the floor. “But they still love you. Even though you don't deserve their love.” 

“You are reading waaay too much into their desire to sell their product.” Kankuro takes a swig from his lukewarm soda. “Well, what about Yogurtland. Nobody there even talks to you unless you're buying something.” 

“Nah. The summer flavors are weird. I hate hibiscus.” 

Gaara says, “I like hibiscus.” Yogurtland becomes an option, one which Kankuro types into his phone. 

“How about 16 Handles?” asks Temari. “We'd have to walk a while, but if we stay hydrated it won't be too hard. We've just been hanging around the apartment all day anyway, I could stand to stretch my legs.”

“We'd have to walk to Cobble Hill. It will take hours. I love heatstroke as much as the next guy, but maybe that's not a good idea. Besides, 16 Handles plays nothing but Lady Gaga and Carly Rae Jepsen. If I have to listen to Bad Romance one more time I will actually explode.” 

“I thought you liked that song,” says Gaara. “It has over 200 plays on your iTunes.” 

“Stop looking at my iTunes! Anyway, I used to like that song and now I'm totally sick of it. I don't want to hear it at top volume while I'm trying to eat frozen yogurt. Besides, their Irish Mint tastes like toothpaste.” 

“Gaara can look at whatever he wants,” snaps Temari, stealing a sip of Slice. Kankuro tries to protest, but she's finished before he can speak. “Ugh, this is mostly backwash. Gross. You'd better not have any germs I don't know about or I'm going to bite your face off. Anyway fine, 16 Handles is out. What about Pinkberry? Their chocolate hazelnut is delicious.” 

“Yeah, but all the hipster moms take their kids there after they finish ransacking Community Bookstore. So if you're worried about germs, Pinkberry is a no. And it's not backwash you stupid shit. It's Slice.” Kankuro chugs a quarter of the bottle, coughs, and smiles. “Ahh! So refreshing. Anyway...Yogurberry?”

“If you like freezerburn, sure. Hey Gaara, want this?” She passes her youngest brother a paper fan made from a torn advertisement for vitamin water, which he accepts. “Yogurberry is gross and their name sounds like boogers. Fuck that. What about that fancy place on 5th Avenue? I think it's called Culture? I've never been there, and it's a little on the pricy side, but it's supposed to be really good.”

“Expensive equals...no,” says Kankuro, rolling his eyes. Temari swats him on the side of the head. 

“It's actually healthy,” she says. “Like, the focus is probiotics instead of enough sugar to induce a diabetic coma. And it tastes better, so it's worth it.” Kankuro complains that she doesn't even know that it tastes better and she's acting like a hipster mom. 

“You've been infected by the Park Slope Mentality. Soon you're going to be eating at the V-Spot and calling us carnivores. Oh, speaking of which, don't they have frozen yogurt at the hot wings place? I could really do with some hot wings right now...” 

“Shut up!” Temari shouts. “If we don't decide where we're going, we're never going to leave. So, fine, we won't go to Culture. I'll go there with Gaara when you're not around. What about that truck, the one that's always in Prospect Park?” 

“YOGO?” Kankuro shrugs. “Eh. Boring. They only have two flavors and they're overpriced. They're okay in a pinch, but I wouldn't seek them out. Besides, I keep thinking that they should be called YOLO. Once they change the name, they'll get my business.”

“What would that even stand for? It's supposed to be like Yogurt on the Go or something. So...yogurt on the Lemon? Yogurt in the Lowlands?”

“Did you just make a Magic Mountain reference in my living room? In the summer? I thought I told you that we're not going to books during the summer.” 

Gaara's head lolls back and lands on the couch. “It could stand for Yogurt in Love,” he says. 

“Was that another literary reference? Because if it was, someone's going to get shanked, and it's going to be Temari.” Kankuro crosses his arms, and sighs. “Ugh...how about that Let's Yo place in the Barclay’s Center?”

“Okay first of all, I do not want to Yo. That is the stupidest name I've ever heard in my life. Second of all, that place isn't open yet. All the Barclay's Center has is Nets merchandise and a Starbucks.” Another swig of Slice, another glare from Kankuro. She turns to Gaara. “Why don't you decide?” she says. 

“I don't really want frozen yogurt at all,” he says, straightening up and fanning himself with the advertisement. “To be honest, I would prefer to go to Uncle Louie G's for Italians ices.” 

Kankuro sighs, then stands up, takes off his shirt, and begins swinging it around his head. “Yeahh! That's the Brooklyn spirit! None of these frou frou fucking froyo places! Italian ices! That's what it's all about! Old Brooklyn represent!” 

Rolling her eyes, Temari heads for the kitchen to prepare water bottles. When she returns she says, “Kankuro, the more you insist that you're not a hipster the more you look like one. Put on your stupid kitty hat and lets go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of these frozen yogurt places are real. However, the characters' opinions of them do not necessarily reflect the author's opinions. The characters hate everything a lot more than the authors do.


	19. Birreria, Flatiron, Manhattan - Sai and Danzo

“It’s not necessary for you to take me out to eat every night,” says Sai, dabbing his mouth with a cloth napkin. “I appreciate that you want to spend time with me, but this is totally inconvenient for both of us. I have school, and you have work. We rarely talk about anything interesting or important, and it would be much cheaper for me to cook for myself at home.” Despite his protests, he continues to eat. His dinner is lamb chops over fried artichokes and seared onions, while his father, Danzo, is eating blood sausage. Danzo’s jaw clicks as he eats, and food is clinging to the corners of his lips.

The food is fine, but Sai would be equally content with bowl of Top Ramen, or Ichiban if he’s feeling fancy. This restaurant, with its airy atmosphere and its pricey menu, seems like a complete waste of time, especially when they ate at Sugiyama yesterday, Masa the day before, and Jean Georges last week. Compared to that list, Birreria seems reasonable, but it really isn’t. His father makes a lot of money working for the Uchiha-Senju Tea Company, but he doesn't make that much. Shin’s medical and funeral expenses still need to be paid, and the last vacation that they took for no reason touched on five European nations. Their rent, though Sai doesn't know quite what it is, is probably high. Money is flowing much too fast, and anyway, Sai would rather be at home drawing. His father is dull, distasteful company.

His father leans back, bad arm cradled in his lap. “Don’t worry about money. I’m climbing my way up the corporate ladder, son. We’ll have a lot more money very soon. Anyway, how’s school?”

“School is boring. Like I said, I wanted to go LaGuardia.” Sai whips out a small sketchbook, and starts sketching random spirals. “It’s a waste of time for me to go to Brooklyn Tech when I have no intention of pursuing anything technical.”

“It’s an excellent school regardless of your career goals,” insists Danzo, stabbing at a large piece of sausage. Sai wonders if he ought to be more elegant while eating out, then decides that it probably doesn't matter. “I’ll admit, I’m disappointed that you didn’t get into Stuyvesant, but 8th grade wasn't a good year for you. You've had plenty of time to get over it, so college shouldn't be any problem as long as you bring your grades up. How are they looking for this semester?”

Sai isn't sure which part of this monologue to respond to, so he picks the last sentence, preferring it to the first. “I’m failing everything except art,” he says, smiling blandly.

A young blonde man sidles up to pour more water. Danzo glares at him, and he walks back to his co-workers. Sai wonders if he is angry at his father, then decides he doesn't care. “Failing…everything,” says Danzo, sucking in his wrinkled cheeks. “Why? Why on earth would you be failing everything? You’re a smart kid, and Dr. Ostrowski said that you were finished grieving. I don’t understand. Help me understand.”

This last part is said with a mouth full of sausage. Sai says, “it looks like you’re eating a dick.” Danzo tells him to shut up and explain himself. Sai takes a sip of his water. “I haven’t been doing my homework,” he says. “Like I said, school is boring. If you would let me go to art school afterward, maybe I’d be motivated to do well, but you keep saying I have to go to business school, and I don’t care about that.” He pops an whole onion into his mouth, then discretely spits it out into his napkin.

“You must go to business school,” snaps Danzo. His water glass is empty, and he scans the area for the waiter he chased off with his glare. “When I take over Uchiha-Senju, I need my son standing by to help me out. There’s no way you can be useful if you go to art school. Maybe if Shin hadn’t died, you’d have more freedom, but as it is I only have one son.”

“You can’t run a company, your dick is much too small,” says Sai. Smiling, he pops a piece of lamb into his mouth. Danzo opens his mouth, preparing to chastise his son for impertinence, but something shuts him up. Sai is fine with this, since the topic is, frankly, useless. Of course his father is never going to take over the tea company. It’s possible that he’ll be promoted to vice president if enough key family members die, but even that seems unlikely, especially since he’s been strenuously opposing the company’s recent attempts to go completely organic and fair trade. Sai has no idea why his father thinks he’ll ever move forward in the company, or even avoid being laid-off, but it’s not something he wants to get into. He also doesn’t want to get yelled at about his comment. He should have stopped after getting chastised for the first dick joke.

Instead of yelling, his father asks if he wants dessert. Sai says that he’ll get something in one of the boutiques downstairs, takes his father’s money, and wanders out of the building in search of somewhere to buy inking pens.


	20. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan - Suigetsu and Mangetsu

“Ughhhhhh, Mama, do we have to go all the way to Manhattan? It's too hot. Can't we just go to the pool?” Suigetsu's lips are pursed in annoyance, and his tiny fists are shaking. Because forming a fist results in his no longer holding his mother's hand, she takes him by the wrist. She says that they spend way too much time at the pool. 

“It's not good for you to be absorbing so much chlorine all the time,” she says. “Besides, it's about time you kids get some culture. You've never been to the MET, and Mangetsu hasn't been since he was two. And it's free! How ridiculous is it that we spend all our time on Staten Island?” 

“Museums are dumb,” mutters Suigetsu. Mangetsu insists that they're not dumb, they're gum. “That doesn't make any sense!!” Suigetsu shrieks. Mangetsu counters that it doesn't make any fence. Their mother shushes them, and hurries them onto the long ticket line. 

“Think about which exhibits you want to see,” she says. “I think we should see the Egyptian art. Mangetsu, your teacher told me that your class is talking about ancient Egypt, so I think it would a wonderful thing for you to see. Also, we have to see the Japanese art. You kids need some exposure to Japanese culture.” 

“Mama, why do we need to be exposed to Japanese bacteria cultures? That would make us sick or be yogurt, and yogurt would start smelling bad before it got from Japan to Staten Island.” Suigetsu pushes his older brother and calls him dumb. Mangetsu says that he's not dumb, he's gruesome. His mother grabs Suigetsu's hand and tells him not to push. “If you don't stop it right now, we're not getting ice cream afterward.” 

“Ice cream is gross!!” cries Suigetsu. Mangetsu cheerily insists that no, ice cream is actually nose. 

“That doesn't rhyme, sweetie,” says their mother.

~`~`~

After a lengthy trip to the bathroom that involves Suigetsu complaining that he's not a girl and doesn't want to go the women's bathroom, and Mangetsu gloating because he's old enough to go to the men's room by himself, and some fighting about who gets to play with the blue metal M that came with Mommy's admission ticket, they are ready to check out the exhibits. 

“I want to see the exhibit on skeletal explosions,” says Mangetsu, jabbing at a random spot on the museum map. This causes Ms. Hozuki to drop the map. She sighs, and picks it up. “No such exhibit,” she says. “If you want an exhibit like that to exist, you'd better make it when you grow up. Only not with real skeletons. Or explosions.” 

“Mama, I'm thirsty!” yells Suigetsu, pawing at his mother's purse, which contains several water bottles. Her kids drink much more water than she does. They drink more than her husband does. They drink more than any other children that she's ever seen. This means that she's forced to carry at least six water bottles at all times, be aware of the locations of public water fountains, stop at Starbucks and McDonalds for free water, and, if it comes to it, buy more water at bodegas. Mangetsu is old enough to hold himself together when he's thirsty, but he quickly gets sick and exhausted, especially in summer. Suigetsu, only five years old, throws tantrums. Once handed water, Suigetsu gulps down the whole bottle in two or three sips. Mangetsu fishes out his own bottle, and they prepare to head for the first exhibit. 

She starts leading them toward the Ancient Egyptian art exhibit, and they're nearly there when Mangetsu says, “I want to see the Greek statues! Their penises are funny. They're just like, there. It's so good.” 

“You're not supposed to say PENIS!! shrieks Suigetsu, stamping his feet. The five heads of an entire family whip around, and two teenage girls snicker behind fanned out fingers. Ms. Hozuki sighs, and tells Suigetsu that that applies to him as well, at least if it's in public. “I don't want to look at penises, Mangetsu is just going to stand there and laugh at them.” Suigetsu crosses his arms, and shuts his eyes. “It's weird. He's weird. I hate him.” 

“You don't hate your brother, you're probably just still thirsty.” She hands him another water bottle. “Mangetsu, we're going to the Egypt exhibit. Come on.” 

~`~`~

The Egypt Wing is spacious, beautiful, and chock-full of educational opportunities. Ms. Hozuki wants to lead her boys toward the statue of Hatshepsut, because Mangetsu has been learning about various pharaohs at school, and they have yet to mention any female ones, a huge oversight in his education as far as she's concerned. But neither of them are interested in Hatshepsut, or the tomb replicas, or the jewelry, or anything that's actually relevant to the exhibit. Instead, both of them are, fascinated by the water fountain near the exit. It's a large, decorative fountain, full of coins that museum-goers have tossed in with a wish. The boys demand coins. “I need at least a quarter or my wish won't come true,” says Suigetsu. 

“And I need at least twenty quarters for my wish! I wish that Suigetsu had feet.” Suigetsu protests that he has feet. “Yeah, but you need more.” Mangetsu kneels at the edge of the fountain, scooping up the water with his hands. “You need one for every foot tall that you are. Hopefully one day you're going to be six feet tall, so you should have six feet on your legs in reserve.” 

This doesn't make any sense to Suigetsu, so when he gets his coin he tosses it in shouting, “I wish my brother wasn't so dumb!” Mangetsu, laughing but sounding just a little choked up, shoves Suigetsu face-first into the fountain before anybody can stop him. Ms. Hozuki grabs her soaking-wet son, and lifts him out. Her hands slip on his torso, pushing his wet shirt up underneath his armpits. She sits down and presses him to her chest, petting his hair and checking him for injury. Suigetsu starts sobbing, and his mother kisses the top of his head.

“Mangetsu!” she shouts. “What is wrong with you?! Do you see how shallow that pool is? He could have cracked his head open and drowned! You cannot just push him without warning. You are eight years old and I know you know better than that!” Mangetsu mumbles an apology, then starts wiping Suigetsu's wet face with his Squirtle t-shirt. A security guard rushes over to assess the damage, and they are soon escorted out of the museum. 

“Can we still get ice cream?” asks Suigetsu, wiping tears from his eyes and sniffling. Ms. Hozuki considers offering it only to Suigetsu, but then she remembers that Suigetsu has been calling his older brother names all day for basically no reason. Neither one of them deserves ice cream, but Suigetsu is crying and Mangetsu is patting the top of his head and saying that he's supposed to be in water because he's a Squirtle and is going to be a Blastoise one day, and it's really weird, and really cute, and she also wants ice cream because it's so damn hot and so...they get ice cream. From the unreasonably expensive truck parked outside of the museum, because the kids aren't going to walk half a mile to find something better.


	21. Steps near the bus stop at Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn - Asuma and Obito

Obito had meant to climb the stairs and sit on a bench inside the park. It would have been peaceful that way. What's left of his limbs ache terribly, and he's dizzy and exhausted from a day spent inhaling fumes from the copy machine, so he could use some quiet. Unfortunately, his physical state means that he can't easily drag himself up the stairs, so he has to sit here watching Tech kids spill out of the school and shove past him to the get to the park, or talk loudly to their friends as they wait for the nearby bus. 

If Asuma hadn't agreed to drive him home he would actually be crying. Which is stupid, because today isn't any different than any other day. He didn't get any sleep last night because the pain kept him up and so did Sasuke's nightmares. This morning the train stopped running at a station with no elevator, and he'd had to hobble up the stairs and catch a bus. His ill-fitting prosthetic had come a bit loose, causing him to lose his balance and almost topple down the stairs. If not for the quick reflexes of a stranger, Obito would have died at the bottom of the stairs. Also, he didn't eat breakfast because there was nothing left at home that he could actually digest, and his painkillers make him nauseous if he doesn't take them with food. So, he's nauseous. Oh, and there were three teachers needing 400 pages worth of bullshit copied, and the copy machine broke down before the first one could finish. Oh, and some attendance sheets mysteriously disappeared and Obito got blamed for that for no reason. Because he was there. 

To top off the shit cake, his mother just texted him back to say that, despite the incredible wealth that she gained by marrying an Uchiha, and despite the fact that Obito is supporting her younger son while he goes to college, and her orphaned teenage nephew indefinitely, she can't lend him any money for the rent this month. Because Shisui's NYU tuition is just so expensive, and having two missing limbs and multiple damaged organs is not a good enough reason not to make enough money to support everyone on his own. Yes, it's been a great day.

So he's sitting on the steps waiting for Asuma to finish the Horizons meeting that he agreed to supervise. Why he wants to help a bunch of bratty teenagers put together a poor quality literary magazine is beyond Obito's comprehension...though, actually, he likes the magazine. The kids are talented writers, talented artists. He's just in one of those moods where everything sucks even when it doesn't. He could have a huge dish of delicious ice cream served to him by a purring kitten with hundred dollar bills taped to its fur, and he'd find some reason to be unhappy about it. 

After ten minutes spent listening to nerdy Tech kids scream about Pokemon and how Stuyvesant can suck their collective dick, Obito is rewarded for his lack of patience by Asuma strolling up to him, twirling his car keys around his index finger. “Hey man, how's it going?” 

“Awesome,” Obito says, injecting happiness into his voice. “I found out the coolest thing about Terry. You know Terry?” No, Asuma doesn't know Terry. “He works in the office, but he's usually in the back. He does data entry and he looks like an Australian surfer dude.” Obito flashes a peace sign and lets out a guttural, “duuuuuude.” He wonders if he's too tired to finish the story, and decides that he isn't. He has to do something in exchange for the ride home, even if it's only mild entertainment. “I found out what his real name is, and it's not Terrence.”

“What is it?” asks Asuma.

“His secret name is Pterodactyl!” When Asuma raises an eyebrow, Obito insists that it's true. “His parents aren't even paleontologists or anything having to do with dinosaurs. I think they're store managers or something. They just wanted to name him Pterodactyl. He made me promise not to tell anyone, but I'm totally breaking my promise. Pterodactyl!”Asuma doesn't seem to think that this is as funny as Obito does. Maybe it's because he doesn't know Terry. He didn't see a huge blonde man with a chiseled jaw blushing over an embarrassing name. Maybe it's because Asuma is also a big guy with a beard, and probably doesn't think that makes it any funnier. But Asuma laughs. “My car's parked over by Juniors. I'll go get it and come back for you. You want cheesecake or something while I'm there? I think they have a few that are gluten free.”


	22. Providence, Rhode Island - Shikamaru, Ino, Choji, Yoshino, Shikaku

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note from SunMoonAndSpoon: This chapter of Naruto in NYC takes place in Providence, Rhode Island, which, as you may have guessed, is not New York City. One of our most devoted readers, SORD aka Kat, has been asking us to write something about Providence for months. We finally decided to do it after visiting her there. So in this chapter, Team 10 goes to Providence to check out Brown University. Kat, I hope you like it, and I hope I didn’t write your city totally wrong!!

“Ughhhhh, we were stuck on that bus for 400 years!” whines Ino, clutching at her elbow and stretching her arm toward the sky. Her purple blouse rides up, briefly exposing the belly button piercing that no one is supposed to know about. She smooths it down and says, “why the hell did we leave New York during rush hour? Aren't we supposed to be smart people?”

Yoshino shrugs her slipping purse back onto her shoulder. “Because it was the cheapest ride we could find. It might not matter to you how much it costs, but it sure as hell matters to your parents. Besides, any earlier and I'd never get this jerk out of bed.” She jostles her son Shikamaru's shoulder, then kisses the top of his head, craning down to do it before realizing that he's tall enough that she doesn't need to. She sighs. “Any later and we'd miss all the tour times.” 

“Why do I have to come?” mumbles Shikamaru, frowning at a traffic sign. “You know I'm getting like a 75 average, right? I'm not getting into Brown. Neither is Choji. Ino's the only one of us who could possibly go here.” 

“Because maybe seeing what kind of school you could go to if you got your grades up will kick your ass into gear.” She sighs, and rubs her temples. “I don't want my brilliant son going to a goddamn CUNY because he was too lazy to do anything else.” 

“Actually,” says Shikamaru's father, Shikaku, “a CUNY would be ideal. We could pay for the whole thing, he'd have no debt, and he could live at home instead of spending four years smoking pot in a dormitory. And I went to Hunter and did fine...no need to bash CUNY.” Yoshino snaps that Brown is a lot more prestigious and will look much better on a resume, and that in this economy you need any edge you can get. “In this economy you need to avoid graduating with thousands of dollars of debt,” says Shikaku, laughing. “Anyway he'll get in somewhere and it'll be fine. Don't worry about Shikamaru, today we're here for Ino. And possibly Choji. Choji, do you have any idea where you might like to go to college?”

Rubbing the back of his neck and blinking nervously, Choji says that he doesn't know, but that he probably doesn't want to leave home because he's not sure that he could handle it. “Of course you could,” says Yoshino. “You're a smart, responsible kid. And Ino, you'll be fine too. It's just this idiot who wouldn't be.” She pulls on Shikamaru's cheek, and flicks him on the temple. “You're right Shikaku, he'd probably just be high the whole time if we sent him here. Waste of money.” 

“Why don't you guys insult me louder? I don't think that all of Providence can hear you.” He sucks his cheek in and leans away from her hand. 

“They don't understand me anyway! Do you think anybody here speaks Japanese? Look at all these white people! Kid, you're not paying attention. Anyway, are we hungry? Did everyone eat enough on the bus or do we need to buy something?” Shikaku says that yes, they should probably eat, and asks what everybody feels like eating.

“I think we're supposed to go to Thayer Street to get to the school, right? Or someplace near there. So maybe we'll find something there?” suggests Ino. Ino is the only person who has bothered to do any research about Providence, because Ino is the only person who has plans to spend more that one day here, making her the Providence expert. Her mother knows a lot more than she does, since her mother went to RISD, but her mother is working and can't make the trip. Shikaku, who isn't even her dad or anything, was supposed to be working too, but he took the day off when her father begged him to make sure she didn't get into trouble. Somehow, that meant that his wife, his kid, and their family friend Choji had to come too. She wouldn't mind if Shikamaru hadn't spent the whole bus ride complaining that he was carsick, if Choji hadn't played his 3DS at top volume while sitting right next to her, and if Yoshino could shut up for one goddamn second, but none of those things are true, so she minds. She wanted to go with her parents, or alone. 

“Ugh, how far are we going to have to walk?” whines Shikamaru, rubbing his stomach. “I'm still nauseous from the bus. Can we rest first?” 

“We don't really have time,” says Shikaku. “If we stop now, you're probably going to want to go to sleep, which could take hours. Though...do you think you're going to be okay? I'll buy you some tea if you think that will help.” Shikamaru nods, still grimacing. “Okay. You'll feel fine once you've been walking for a bit. If for some reason you don't, we'll find somewhere for you to lie down while Ino takes her tour.” 

“We should buy some Dramamine or something for the trip back,” says Yoshino. Ino sighs. She gets it, Shikamaru got carsick, can they please move on and eat so that they can make it on time for the tour? This is only her entire college career that's at stake here. She says nothing, knowing it would be selfish to complain. Still, she's nervous, gripping her elbows and tapping her feet. And she's hungry. Choji's hungry. They need to get a move on. 

“There's probably a pharmacy or something near the school!” she says brightly. “Let's get going, okay?”

~`~`~

 

Thayer Street is as busy as back home, though it's a different kind of busy. The street screams college students, much like the areas around NYU and Columbia. People probably do live here year-round, but most of what Ino sees are 20-somethings with Brown-stamped sweatshirts. There's a Thayer Street near where she lives, but it's entirely residential. Her neighborhood is busy too, but it's the busyness of people getting on the train and buying groceries. This is the fun kind of busy, with cute shops and frozen yogurt places and restaurants. People probably buy groceries here too, but she doesn't see it. Instead she sees the glitz of college living, herself sitting outside one of those posh-looking restaurants, eating fancy food and smiling. 

The first thing that they do is visit a tea shop. It's a block away from a Starbucks, which Choji suggests as an alternative. “We know they have good stuff,” he says, hands shoved in his pockets, eyes cast toward the floor. Ino is about to agree—she knows that Choji is sometimes nervous about new places, and needs the familiar to anchor him, but before she can say anything they're all headed into the Tealuxe on the corner, a shop with huge puffy letters for a logo. Shikamaru disappears into the bathroom, and the rest of them thumb through the menu. 

“The adults are buying, right?” asks Ino. Of course they are. Shikamaru returns, annoyed, because apparently he has to get a key to use the bathroom. He complains, loudly, that they should have just gone to Starbucks. 

It takes nearly twenty minutes to pick out the tea and go. Shikaku doesn't know what he wants, Shikamaru can't find ginger tea despite it being right there on the menu, Yoshino wants coffee instead and is actually going to Starbucks while they place their orders, Choji wants an extra cup to save his hands from heat and isn't able to make himself understood to the barista, and Ino is so frustrated with everyone else that she forgets to choose something for herself. She impulsively selects coconut pouchong, despite not being entirely sure what pouchong is. Once Shikaku gets his tea he doesn't like it and won't stop complaining about it, but won't do anything about it either.

Finally, they spill out into the sparkling sunlight. College kids are swarming everywhere, and Ino wants to run up and start asking them questions about Brown. Which majors are the best? What kind of clubs are there? Will there be anybody who speaks Japanese? What are the meal plans like, and which one is the best? Which teachers should she avoid, and which ones should she stalk? Does the cost really justify the quality of education? What kind of financial aid is available? What do the dorms look like? Will she and her mom get along better if they both went to college in the same town? Will anybody date her if she doesn't live in Providence full-time? 

Instead of interrogating an innocent student, Ino listens to Choji and Shikamaru debate whether the fact that Shikamaru doesn't care about Macklemore means that nobody does. She says, “I care about Macklemore more than I care about anything in the entire world. Macklemore is my whole life. How dare you suggest that he's irrelevant!” and laughs. She has never listened to Macklemore. 

The group wanders for a wild, trying to cool hot tea with their breath, and searching for somewhere to eat. Ino doesn't know how to get anywhere except RISD, and no one else knows how to get anywhere, so they end up by the water and the RISD dorms. “Well, we're lost,” says Shikaku. “Good thing the tour isn't for two hours.” He shrugs, and leans against the railing, head tilted toward the small scattering of trees across the long river. A black statue, probably made by an RISD student, provides some welcome shade. “This is a pretty nice view,” Shikaku says. “Your mom must have loved it here. No wonder she wants you in Providence so bad.” He takes a quick sip of his tea, then sticks his tongue out and complains that it's still too hot. Yoshino is grabbing Shikamaru's face and pointing him toward various buildings, while Choji is sitting on the sidewalk playing Animal Crossing. Ino stands with her hands around her teacup, her hair whipping in her face. Shikaku asks, “do you want to live here? Or do you just want to make your mom happy?” He presses two knuckles to her shoulder. “Because you know, she just wants you to have a good education, and she thinks you'd have fun here . But I understand why you might not want to leave the city. Shikamaru's not ready to leave home, and it's okay if you're not either.” 

“I'm ready,” says Ino, arms crossed around her stomach. “I love New York, and I love living in the same building as you guys...but look at this place! It's beautiful, don't you think? It's so different from the city, and I am so ready for a change of scenery.” A cold wind whips her ponytail into her mouth, and the pulls it out. “And Brown is a really good school,” she says. “The education I get there could open up a lot of doors for me in the future.” 

“Well, you could get a great education just about anywhere. If you want to go someplace fancy, there's Columbia and NYU. Heck, even if you went to BMCC I'm sure you'd do fine.” Shikaku laughs. “Look, I'm supposed to talk you out of it. Your dad doesn't want you leaving home because you're his precious baby daughter and all that.” Ino plunks down between Shikaku and Choji, and peers at his 3DS screen, where his avatar is arguing with Tom Nook. Her overprotective father is the last thing she wants to hear about right now. Shikaku pats her shoulder. “I'm not going to do that,” he says. “It's totally up to you, as long as you can come up with the scratch for it. But you'll get scholarships.” 

“I'm already looking into that,” says Ino. Shikaku smiles and says he expected as much. 

Yoshino bends down and pokes her husband in the head. “We need to get food,” she says. “The kid's not carsick anymore, so now he's whining about being hungry. Wanna get going?” Slowly, the group rises from their seats, and they wander off in search of food. 

~`~`~

Lunch is delicious, but weird. They got hot dogs, which Ino doesn't normally like but which Shikaku loves. Shikaku once worked at Gray's Papaya. Shikaku makes rice balls with chopped-up hot dogs as a filling and everyone he knows thinks it's morally wrong. Ino suspects that he may have come along on this trip solely to try this Rhode Island specialty. It's a hot dog topped with celery salt, onions, mustard, and meat sauce. They call them wieners. This is difficult for Ino to say without giggling, but she purses her lips and doesn't laugh. Choji does, and Shikamaru does, and she wants to laugh with them and finally, she does. “Penis dog,” she sputters, fingers fanned around her mouth. Yoshino glares at them, and they fall silent. 

The store is almost entirely empty, save for the workers and one customer, a lady with a t-shirt that says YOLO and a black cat meowing in a cat carrier. Yoshino whispers that they shouldn't sit near her, because the cat might get loose and eat their food. The cat carrier looks sturdy enough, but they sit down by the window all the same. Choji and Shikaku finish eating within minutes, while everyone else takes their time. There's free cake on the side table due to somebody's birthday. Ino tries to abstain, telling herself that it just looks like nasty grocery store cake, and she's not missing anything, but she ends up eating an entire slice of Shikamaru's plate. “Don't feel bad about it,” he mutters, brushing her shoulder with his knuckles. “You ate it. It's over. It's not going to make you fat. If it does it doesn't matter. Don't get upset.” Ino nods. She promised her mother that if she went away to college, she wouldn't diet, and she appreciates Shikamaru holding her to it, soothing her through it. 

“I'm going to really miss you guys if I go away,” she says, lolling her head toward Shikamaru's. “You'd better stay in contact, okay? Let's do like...Skype sessions where you guys ignore me and play video games and I yell at you while doing something productive.” Choji laughs, which means that the dig at them was okay. “And you'll visit me, right?” 

“You haven't even applied to Brown yet, and you're already talking like you're going to go there,” laughs Shikamaru. “I guess you're sold on the place, huh?” 

“Maybe. I don't know. I'm definitely sold on leaving the city though. How am I supposed to know that New York is the best if I never have anything to compare it to?”

“New York is unquestionably the greatest city to ever exist,” says Shikamaru. “You don't even have to leave your apartment to know that.” 

“You don't know that. Maybe Providence is the greatest city to ever exist. Maybe it's Paris. Maybe it's Yokohama.” Ino picks some chocolate frosting off what's left of Shikamaru's cake, and pops it in her mouth. “Maybe the greatest city is on Mars.” 

“Mars might be a little further than your folks are willing to send you,” laughs Shikaku. “Maybe you can get a job on Mercury after you graduate.” 

~`~`~

They make their way the campus center on Waterman Street after several failed attempts, and finally arrive. Wind whips her ponytail into her face again, and she purses her lips and stares at the imposing brick building with its gray steps and its stone statue. “Okay guys,” she says. “I'm ready. Take my picture?” 

“Oh my god Ino, it's just a tour, you're not moving in yet, calm down,” says Shikamaru, digging for his phone. But he takes her picture anyway, and shows her a screen splattered with her shiny bright smile. “I'll put it on Facebook for you so you can pay attention,” he says. Ino thanks him with a peck on the cheek, then runs off to talk to a prospective student with long red hair and a turquoise nose ring.


End file.
